OSAMA Bin Laden’s brother has chosen a different path to prominence with insane plans for the world’s longest suspension bridge.
Spanning 20 miles over the Red Sea, Sheik Tarek Bin Laden‘s multi-billion-pound project promises to link Africa with the Middle East.
Osama Bin Laden’s brother, Sheik Tarek Bin Laden (pictured), has plans for the world’s longest suspension bridge
The mega bridge will aim to connect Africa to the Middle East by linking Djibouti to Yemen
The structure, dubbed the “Bridge of the Horns”, is expected to be a combination of causeway and suspension bridge with four piers.
It is part of the overarching Al Noor project, estimated to cost a whopping £100 billion.
The road and rail crossing part will be a massive six-lane causeway carrying up to 100,000 vehicles per day.
Another four light rail lines that would carry up to 50,000 passengers daily, as well as gas and water pipelines.
It will also accommodate the massive number of ships that pass through the Red Sea via the Suez Canal thanks to the sky-high suspension.
As the Bab-el-Mandeb strait’s waters are up to 300 metres deep, the bridge’s towers would have to be 700 metres high – 400 metres of which would be above water – to support the structure.
Two new cities will also be built at either end of the Bridge of the Horns—one in Djibouti and the other in Yemen.
Referred to as “Al-Noor cities” – or “Cities of Light” – the plan is to build a city of 2.5 million people on the Djiboutian side and another of 4.5 million on the Yemeni side over 15 years.
The new metropolises are envisioned to be “the envy of the world,” according to Sheik Bin Laden.
It is hoped that the cities will be models of sustainability and humanitarian values, built entirely with green technologies and powered by renewable energy sources.
They will feature the finest hospitals, schools, world-class universities and sporting facilities.
The cities also aim to provide much-needed economic stability to tiny Djibouti, transforming the country into a major economic hub as a new link between Africa and the Middle East.
Djibouti already saw a minor boom when nearby Ethiopia lost sea access after Eritrea’s independence.
Therefore, Ethiopia now utilises Djibouti as its main shipping port to the outside world.
Once finished, the two cities will be models for another 98 Sheikh Bin Laden aspires to build globally but has yet to determine where.
In addition to the towns planned at each end of the Bridge of the Horns, Al-Noor cities have been suggested for Syria, Egypt, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia‘s Mecca-Jeddah corridor.
The Djiboutian government appears keen to move forward, having already set aside hundreds of square miles of land for the creation of an Al-Noor metropolis on its end, basementgeographer.com reports
But despite already investing millions in the project, Sheik Bin Laden’s ambition is still nothing but a megalomaniac dream.
The project still sits in planning stage since it was initially revealed 16 years ago, in 2008.
And neither the Yemeni nor the Djiboutian governments have signed a framework agreement allowing Al-Noor to go ahead.
The lack of publicly available plans other than a mission statement and conceptual pictures has also left some people sceptical of the project’s completion.
The lack of connecting infrastructure is another issue.
New highways and railways would have to be built to link the bridge to major cities like Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Jeddah, Dubai and Riyadh – all hundreds of miles away.
Considering the Middle East has become a powder keg unsettled by Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas, and the Iran-backed Houthi rebel attacks in the Red Sea, we might not be hearing about the Bridge of the Horns anytime soon.
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